Who Were the Lycians?

History has not left us with as clear a picture
of the Lycians as it has with some other ancient civilizations, such as the
Greeks. However, some questions and facts regarding the Lycians can be
answered or at least speculated upon.

The Lycians were an ancient people who
inhabited the area of present day Turkey between the bays of Antalya and Fethiye,
a compact, mountainous territory. The ancient Greeks knew and admired the
Lycians, for the Lycians had solved a problem which baffled the ancient world:
how to reconcile free government in the city-state with the needs of a larger
political unity. The Lycians had a fierce desire for freedom and independence
and this found its expression in their sense of unity and federation. The
institutions of the democratic
Lycian Federation (the first democratic
union known) were studied and envied by most classical writers. While
Greek city-states were constantly at war with each other, the Lycian cities
enjoyed peace amongst themselves.

The Lycians were an important part of the Greek
and Near Eastern worlds since they lived at the point where the two cultures
intermingled at an important strategic juncture. The Lycians came under the twin
influences of their neighbours. As a result they developed a very different
style of art.

The Lycians were also one of the
few non-Hellenistic nations of antiquity which could not be called ‘barbarians’.
In fact, their image in antiquity was much like that of today's Swiss: a
hard-working and wealthy people, neutral in world affairs but fierce in the
defense of their freedom and conservative in their attachment to ancestral
tradition. Lycia was the last region on the entire Mediterranean coast to be
incorporated as a province in the Roman Empire and even then the Lycian Union
continued to function independently. The Lycians spoke a language of their own,
with their own unique alphabet, before adopting Greek around the 3rd
century BC. Their many monuments, especially their beautiful tombs which embody
their ancestor cult, still dot the entire landscape of the southwest coast of
Turkey between the Gulf of Fethiye and Phaselis.

Besides their unique form of government,
the Lycians may have had one unusual custom that the Greeks found very
unfamilliar. Herodotos noted: "They have customs that resemble no one
else’s. They use their mother’s name instead of their father’s. If one
Lycian asks another from whom he is descended, he gives the name of his
mother. And if a citizen woman should cohabit with a slave, the children
are considered of free birth; but if a citizen man, even the foremost of
them, has a foreign wife or mistress, the children are without honour".
However, it seems that Herodotos may have been speaking of an older
Lycian custom, for in Lycian and Greek inscriptions alike a man is
described as the son of his father. But it may be that in private
life the Lycians followed a matriarchal order while adhering to
contemporary customs in public expression, such as inscriptions on
tombs. So far, no one has been able to solve the question. It is
noteworthy, however, that a woman was allowed to preside over the
national assembly held each year at the national shrine of Lycia,
Letoon. This is a reminder of the ancient matriarchal customs in
Anatolia.

The Lycians were most likely in origin an
Anatolian people since they spoke their own Indo-European language closely
related to Luwian and Hittite.

From archaelogical excavations in the
Karataş-Semahoyuk area near Elmali, examples of earthenware pottery have
been found reveal that the region was settled by the third
millennium BC. Moreover, the fact that Lycian place names
containing, "-nd", "-nt", "-ss" (Kalynda, Arykanda, Telmessos,
Idebessos) occur in a number of Anatolian sites also dated to the fourth
millennium B.C. verifes this early settlement date linguistically.
An axe has also been found at Tlos, dated around 2000 BC.

We know that the Lycians had powerful sea
and land forces by the second millennium BC and had already established an
independent state. The earliest
historical references to the Lycians date back to the Late Bronze Age (ca
1500-1200 BC) in numerous Egyptian, Hittite and Ugaritic texts. It is known
from these that the Lycians (called ‘Lukka’ in these sources) were involved
in acts of piracy against Cyprus around 1400 BC, that they fought against
Egypt in the ranks of the Hittites during the battle of Kadesh in 1295 BC
and that they participated with the Libyans. What is interesting is
that in early records, the Lycians are referred to as 'Lukka', 'Lukki' or
'Ruw-ku', while the Lycians themselves never used these terms, instead
calling themselves
Trmmli (Termilae in Greek) and their country
Trmmisa.

Lycia as a rather self-ruling area existed
until the Byzantine period (ca 395-1176 AD) though it was affected by
disturbances during the Persian domination (545-333 BC) and the Roman
Tyranny in 42 BC by Brutus.

In Greek legend the Lycians first appear as
allies of Troy in the Trojan Wars. Homer reports: "From distant Lycia
and the whirling Xanthos came the Lycians led by
Sarpedon and heroic Glaucus". They Lycians seem to have identified
with this version of history. The
reliefs of the Heroon of Trysa, one of the greatest finds of Lycian
archeology (owned by the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, though not on
public display) are unique in classical art as they show scenes of the
Trojan War from a Trojan rather than a Greek perspective.

In myth the rulers of Lycia also sometimes
appear as the offspring of the mythical hero
Bellerophon.

In the Lycians' early history, they were
confined to the Xanthos River Valley and in later classical times the
country expanded north to the Indus River (Dalaman Çayi) and east to
Phaselis. Some scholars believe that before the 6th century
conquest of Lycia by the Persians, Lycia's political boundry only
existed no further than the Xanthos Valley. The rest of Lycia's
future territory was inhabited by other tribes, such as the Solymoi.

What Did the Lycians Look Like?

We don't have much of a record of
physical descriptions, but one interesting aspect of the Lycians may
have been their hairstyles, at least in earlier times. Polyaenus
notes that a man named Charimenes managed to escape across Lycia by
putting on false hair. Oeconomica tells a story of
Mausolos' hyparch taxing the hair lenght of the Lycians.
Long-haired Lycians are also depicted in some relief sculptures, on a
sacrophagus from Limyra, on some coins and on a silver-head vase in the
British Museum. These are the only descriptions and depictions we have
of long-haired Lycians, however.

In 480 BC the Lycians joined the Persian
king Xerxes's invasion of Greece with 50 ships. Heredotus gives us this
description of the Lycian crew:

"The wore greaves and
corslets; they carried bows of cornel wood, cane arrows without
feathers, and javelins. They had goatskin slung round their
shoulders, and hats stuck round with feathers. They also carried
daggers and rip-hooks."

This description tells us
that the Lycians had a very different appearance from other troops from
Asia Minor, who wore Greek armor.